Preview of 2012 - Martin Creed: All the Bells

Turner Prize winner invites Brits to ring in the Olympics

Controversial he may be but conceptual artist Martin Creed has always been brutally honest with the paying public. His most famous work to date, Work No. 227: the lights going on and off, did exactly what it said on the tin and helped the Glasgow-raised artist to scoop the Turner Prize in 2001. And you’d be hard-pressed to find a more bluntly descriptive title than Work No. 79: some Blu-tack kneaded, rolled into a ball and depressed against a wall.

Creed’s latest project, a special commission for the London 2012 Festival, is the pithily-entitled Work No. 1197: All the bells in a country rung as quickly and as loudly as possible for three minutes. The nationwide bell-ringing will start at 8am on Friday 27 July to mark the launch of the Olympic and Paralympic Games as part of the UK-wide programme of events that is the culmination of the four-year Cultural Olympiad. Anyone interested in joining Creed’s ringing community should visit allthebells.com for further information. As the artist himself makes clear, all bells are welcome, whether hand bells, door bells, bicycle bells, church bells, town hall bells, sleigh bells, cow bells or dinner bells.

Fri 27 Jul.

Like the sound of this? Check out NVA's Speed of Light, in which runners wearing light suits illuminate Arthur’s Seat. Edinburgh, Aug